NY: Will Congestion Pricing Really Ease New York City's Traffic Woes?

Starting on the morning of Jan. 5, barring some unexpected reversal, it will cost $9 for most people to drive just about anywhere during peak traffic hours in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Chelsea, Times Square, Soho — taking your car anywhere near them in daytime can cost you nine bucks.

It's the major American premiere of congestion pricing, opening a new round in what must be the longest-running soap opera in the nation's urban planning history. First proposed in the 1950s by the geographer William Vickrey, it was promoted in 2008 by then- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, only to die in the state Legislature. That obstacle was overcome in 2017 by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and following a parade of legal challenges it was scheduled to take effect this year. But Cuomo's successor, Kathy Hochul, killed it in June, apparently out of concern that suburban opposition would cost the Democrats votes in the November election.

It seems to have worked. Democrats gained seats in the Legislature, and after the voting was over Hochul reinstated the program, knocking the congestion fee down from $15 and building in a few more exemptions. So it's ready to go, although incoming President Donald Trump has vowed to fight it in his first week in office, arguing that congestion pricing will hurt Manhattan businesses and drive away tourists.

That may be a long shot. But there are also at least nine lawsuits against the scheme that have to be taken somewhat seriously. Many are from suburban New Jersey commuters who see it as a confiscatory tax that will bring them no benefits. Five Republican members of Congress from the New York City region have asked the Trump administration "to end this absurd congestion pricing cash grab once and for all."

The $9 charge will apply between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Trucks and buses will pay more than cars. Ride-hailing services will have to add a $1.50 surcharge. There are a variety of exemptions for low-income drivers and those with disabilities. The $9 fee will apply for the first three years. Then it can go up to $12, and in 2031 to $15, the amount the original plan called for.

Congestion pricing is meant to serve a bunch of benevolent purposes. One, of course, is to thin out traffic on Manhattan's most gridlocked streets. But it's also meant to reduce carbon pollution and contribute to the battle against climate change. And it will bring in funding that the city's beleaguered transit system badly needs — an estimated $500 million annually in the first three years. The version Gov. Hochul killed in June would have yielded almost twice that much, but transit planners will be glad to take what they can get. They will apparently be able to leverage the income from congestion pricing to issue $15 billion worth of transit-related bonds.

I have to confess I've always been a believer in congestion pricing. But will it do the things its supporters are hoping it will do? And is it an equitable public policy? Those remain fair questions.

The first question

The first question is just how much traffic congestion the program will relieve. Charles Komanoff, a longtime student of transportation and head of the Carbon Tax Center, estimates that in the short term driving speeds will improve by only 5.5 percent but that in the later years, with higher congestion fees and transit improvements paid for with the congestion revenues, that number could be as high as 16 percent. Komanoff says his figures account for "rebound driving" lured by the drop in congestion.

But how much difference would those relatively modest numbers make in the transportation culture of New York City? And if driving speeds do pick up substantially, might that create an induced demand, bringing in new drivers and sending the streets back into gridlock? Janette Sadik-Khan, the former New York City transportation commissioner, has warned of this. She thinks that a 20 percent reduction in traffic, if it isn't accompanied by the closure of a substantial number of driving lanes, would eventually return Manhattan to the situation it has worked so hard to eliminate.

Something like this happened in London, where the central city districts have been operating under congestion pricing for the past two decades. It currently costs 15 pounds (about 20 U.S. dollars) for most drivers to enter streets governed by the charge. Although the results vary from year to year, the consensus seems to be that congestion pricing typically reduces the volume of traffic about 10 percent. But it's also been reported that speeds have been gradually declining over the past few years.

Other cities in the developed world have reported less ambiguous results. Stockholm, which instituted congestion pricing in 2007, reported a decline in traffic in the affected areas of about 20 percent in the first decade. But Stockholm coupled congestion charges with a massive expansion of its public transit system. It remains to be seen whether New York will have the money to attempt anything like that.

Singapore, which has been experimenting with congestion pricing since the 1970s, moved after a couple of decades to an electronic pricing system in which the charges depend on a car's location, the time of day and the type of automobile, as well as its speed. This tamped down some of the early objections to the program and seems to have resulted in a greater long-term acceptance.

So, does congestion pricing work?

Well, sometimes, in some places. Is it fair? One of the strongest objections in New York has been that affluent commuters will shrug off a $9 charge while less-fortunate residents will have trouble paying it and may have problems getting around the city.

Is it acceptable to impose charges that some elements of local society will find onerous? Reasonable people may differ on this, but the fact is that something like congestion pricing already exists on a number of fronts. Utilities charge their customers more during periods of peak demand. So do some airlines. In northern Virginia, where I live, it costs substantially more to drive on Interstate 66 at rush hour than it does at less-busy times. I haven't found too many people who like this, but there haven't been militant protests, either.

Still, congestion pricing seems to fall into the category of regulation that lots of average citizens resent because it intrudes on their personal freedom. They objected in large numbers when Mayor Bloomberg moved to restrict the sale of "Big Gulp" soda drinks in New York restaurants and at soda fountains. That effort was fought in court largely by the soft-drink industry, but it was opposed by a large cohort of middle-class New Yorkers and was ultimately invalidated in court. The soda law was viewed as discrimination against ordinary people who appreciated their liberty to buy a 42-ounce Mountain Dew if they wanted one.

So congestion pricing, even if it sticks, is likely to irk lots of New Yorkers and suburbanites for years to come. Is it possible to accomplish the same goal in a different way? What about simply banning cars from the center of the city?

Across the ocean, a few places are trying this. There are car-free zones now in Brussels, Dublin and Madrid. But the most dramatic experiment is in Paris, where driving a car into four central arrondissements is now mostly against the law, subject to a penalty equal to about 150 U.S. dollars. The area covered has around 100,000 residents who are allowed to drive within the no-driving zone. Buses, taxis and citizens with disabilities are also exempt. The local government is predicting traffic reductions of up to 30 percent on some of the city's busiest streets, along with a major improvement in air quality.

What was revealing to me was the calmness with which many Parisians, normally a rather quarrelsome lot, seem to be accepting this rather dramatic venture into urbanist revision. Some have argued that the four covered neighborhoods will end up like gated private communities, but this doesn't appear to be majority opinion. That may be because large numbers of people who live within the neighborhoods do most of their local traveling on bicycles or on the Paris Metro and don't think they will be inconvenienced very much.

Eliminating most cars from the center of a city has one advantage: It feels, in an odd sort of way, more equitable than a congestion charge. Almost everyone has to abide by it, and there's no advantage given to those who can pay $9 or $15 to drive their way in.

Could something like that work in an American city? Not right now, not without making public transit into a more attractive option. We're a long way from that, even in New York. Maybe the best thing we can do is try the congestion experiment and see if we can gradually create a more robust transportation system to support it.

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